Top 10 Reasons for a Space Program

Its_My_Hair writes "Space.com has an article on the top ten reasons for a space program. Most of the reasons seem to say that our space programs are here for our safety." The only necessary reason is "because it's there".

Comments

Objectives

[Anonymous Coward]

The space program really does need some very visable goals. How about a manned Mars mission by 2015?

Why use people?

[capt.Hij]

None of the reasons given imply that we need a human presence in space. As long as we have to use huge, contained explosions to move things off of the planet there is little reason to put humans in space.

They also forgot the 11th reason. NASA is a government agency, and government agencies must find reasons to exist and grow their budgets.

Re:Why use people?

[cybercuzco]

there is little reason to put humans in space.

So youre saying we shouldnt put humans in space beecause its dangerous? There must be some mutation in your genes that makes you afraid, because if your ancestors had that gene we would still be stuck in africa wondering whats over the next mountain. How many resourcees were spent traveling from africa to australia? From africa to the mid east? from the mid east to europe, asia and the americas? How many people died from new diseases, new dangers, new predators? How many human beings died from the cold of the ice ages? Thousands? Millions? As a percentage of the total human population at the time it must have been significant. And youre saying because weve lost 17 humans on our quest to move into space we should stop because its dangerous? There is only one reason needed to use humans in space: So we can make it an environment for humans to live in. Europeans settlers came to america searching for gold, what they got was tobacco, timber and furs, and ultimately made alot more money that way. We dont know what we might find in space, or what the economic benifits might be. Humans are needed in space because humans want to live in space, just as humans wanted to live in the mid east, asia, europe and north and south america.

Re:FYI for Slashdotters

[fruey]

While I take your point, there is a lot of development money being spent on TV broadcasts of open educational content to local schools all over the developing world. Allowing extra tailored learning materials to be distributed just country wide in a place like Morocco (a better example, because Ethiopia really is behind in most economic indicators) is not possible with terrestrial transmitters, and so they could use (and in a pilot scheme are using) satellite airtime to transmit their own content from the capital city, based on the individual nation's national curriculum.

However, the infrastructure, including TVs, classrooms, etc... is not always there, so you do have a point. Better building the schools first :) but where they do exist, you can leverage satellite technologies.

Do not forget that most development contracts go to US suppliers. So USAID give a load of money to a project, but most of it goes back to US companies for their satellite time, TVs, cameras, lighting, mixing desks... whereas building projects cannot always pass muster with the guidelines that budgets should be granted, where possible, to US based companies. Maybe that policy isn't so wrong, because just giving money to local companies often results in graft and lack of accountability.

Re:Space...

[arivanov]

It is actually the same as with Open Source. Private enterprise has not learned how to extract money from something that is already there and is not being tightly controlled. Examples:

• geological survey data - ever thought of selling that landslide probability data for California to the house insurance companies?
• Water temperature and conditions data - ever thought of selling this to fishermen?
• So on so fourth.

The problem with selling them is that there is always at least one more party to have access to these (start with your own gov and continue with russians, europeans, chinese, etc). There is no monopoly and you have to rely on value added services to make this profitable. Corps do not like this in an emerging market. No VC will invest in a concept for which they know that it will not have the market to its own for at least a few years.